And therein lies the problem for high speed rail in the US. We don't have that supporting network, and we're not going to. We're too spread out in our cities for it to work.
So it's drive 30 miles to the train station and then pay $15 a day for parking while on your trip, like the airport.
Definitely - most places in the US can't support a rail system. Partly because we're so spread out, but partly because it's a catch 22: we don't have it, so we all have cars, so we won't use it if we're offered it because cars are more convenient and they're already a sunk cost. Then there's also that our culture doesn't cast a very good light on public transit (homeless people, pee, graffiti, etc), and we're still very caught up in cars == freedom mentality.
edit: all that said, I'm not aware of anywhere that has high-speed rails going outside city centers. But I'm hardly an expert on this - I'd love a counter-example. Japan, for instance, has their bullet trains essentially only between city centers, and subway and light rail supporting it. And that's one of the better rail systems in the world.
Homeless people, pee and graffiti are fairly easy problems to solve, and can be turned around quite fast. Lots of places have resolved this.
The sunk cost argument can be overcome if you make public transport faster than cars, less congestion and parking difficulties is a big change. But you do have to rebuild it first (yes the US had public transport in the past, you ripped it out).
They're fairly easy problems to solve, but public opinion of it generally lags behind reality. And the occasional reappearance only strengthens it in people's minds for longer. So even once you've solved it, you still need to wait what are likely to be years to see the general population actually using the system without it being their last resort. During that time, funding threatens to drop because of lack of use. You need people willing to throw massive amounts of money at it until it works, not until it stops making money.
And yeah, if public transit gets better than personal, things will change very quickly. But that path involves trillions of dollars, and just try getting a tax increase voted through for one. I'd love it, but it's not happening any time soon, and certainly not on a large scale.
I've heard that we've got a great existing rail infrastructure--the problem being that most isn't straight enough or suitable for use with high speed trains.
For example, the last train trip I took stopped a handful of times while we waited for livestock to finish crossing the tracks. High speed trains do not do this.
And therein lies the problem for high speed rail in the US. We don't have that supporting network, and we're not going to. We're too spread out in our cities for it to work.
So it's drive 30 miles to the train station and then pay $15 a day for parking while on your trip, like the airport.